Resolutions for 2010

2008's resolutions were a grand success. I no longer have sugar in coffee or tea and I only drink skimmed milk if possible. In contrast 2009's were a total wash, but I did buy a house and graduate with a distinction, so things worked out in grand fashion.

Here's the list for 2010...

1. Write every day.
2. Eat better (less pastry and bread).
3. Exercise more.
4. Keep school nights free of guests.
5. Learn more career related skills.
6. Watch less TV.
7. Drink less coffee.
8. Get up earlier.
9. Work harder to ignore anxiety and annoyance.
10. Take regular holidays.

Lofty goals indeed. Here's hoping I stick to at least one of them.

Onward!

Fundamental Change of Outlook

I've decided to stop getting stressed over things I can't change. No. Really. Stop laughing... I'm right here you know!

Anyone who has spent any amount of time around me will know that anxiety is a good friend of mine. All those sad little thoughts mount up at the back of my mind until they spill over and show me exactly how the life I've built for myself could go horrifically wrong. Then comes the sadness, the anger, the frustration and the absolute shitting terror. There's a lot out there to worry about and I tend to let it influence me more than other people I know... unless they just hide it better.

Anyway, it took living with someone to really understand what a problem anxiety was. Living alone you have no perspective. You don't know what it's doing to you and the potential it has to mess with other people. It's very hard to get a good sense of your own mannerisms when you live on your own. That and you just don't care as much.

So here we are at the end of the decade with Christmas bearing down on us. This is me making a conscious decision to not sweat the small stuff, or the big stuff that I have no control over.

We'll see how it goes...

Vampire Books, Brian Lumley and Metamorphic Proto Flesh

So I was discussing vampire stories, in the wake of the latest Twilight movie, and realised that I've not read nearly so many of them as I thought. So let's get a couple of things out of the way. I've not read Anne Rice, Dracula, The Vampyre, Twilight, 'Salem's Lot or any of the others that I probably should have. That right there probably makes it illegal for me to discuss vampire stories, but never mind. It's after midnight and I'm running on fumes...

I'm currently reading The Evil Seed by Joanne Harris. Apparently it's her "haunting debut novel". I have to admit to being kind of disappointed when I realised it was another vampire story, but oh well. I'll keep at it on account of her prose being ridiculously readable.

When you mention George R. R. Martin people think of fantasy. Specifically, they think of his Song of Ice and Fire series and are likely to whine about the lack of the next book. Ignore them. Fevre Dream is better. It's got vampires on steamboats! The hero is ageing, overweight and anything but dashing. The story is filled with desperation and loss from start to finish. Just fantastic!

Richard Matheson wrote I Am Legend, a stonkingly good science fiction take on the vampire story. The last man on earth struggles for survival at night. During the day he hunts vampires and uses his powers of science to figure out what created them! There's also a dog. Apparently the movie adaptation sucked (never saw it myself) and was less than faithful to the original, going so far as to make the title pointless. In the book the title has a point! Read it!

Already Dead is the first book in a vampire noir series by Charlie Huston. It's set in Manhattan and stars Joe Pitt, a gritty renegade type who struggles to make a living, while avoiding joining any of the big vampire clans. It's dark, it's violent and it's a damned good read (all 1 day it'll take you per book). Oh also, the characters have no idea what makes them what they are, which means Huston can avoid all kinds of tedious discussions. Very good!

One of my writing tutors once told me that Brian Lumley is a very scary man. Judging by his Necroscope series (and it's sequels) you might be tempted to agree. But then I heard him read at Alt.Fiction the other year and he seemed very nice! But let's get this said. The Necroscope books are truly horrific. Yes I know they're horror, but damn these take it to an extreme. The first opens with a man torturing the dead for its secrets (using the dead guy's body as a "means of communication") and the fifth one features a character who "makes his own holes". That's before you get to the vampires. I hear a lot of people complaining that vampires have lost their teeth. Well look no further. Lumley's are monsters in every sense of the word. And yes they also have metamorphic proto flesh. They don't shapeshift so much as fleshcraft and create their own creatures (and houses!) from other people. This means you get to read a few rather bizarre sex scenes too! Harry Keogh, the hero, is a maths wizard who can talk to the dead! There's also psychic intelligence agencies fighting it out! And wormholes!

So if you know people stuck for interesting vampire literature, feel free to recommend any of these.

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Oh Dear… and Stuff

I kinda forgot my whole one or two posts a week rule for a while there. Can't say it'll change from here on out, but you never know. The whole purpose of this blog was to talk about writing, so when I don't have a lot to say about it...

We've started workshopping again, resurrecting the group (fortnightly on Wednesdays) that saw me through a year of fiction on the MA. We've two sessions under our belt now and I'm really enjoying it. The second session was particularly good, with people offering suggestions for improvement as well as the normal critique. I'm up next though... Should be interesting, if extremely humbling.

My own writing is very much stop/start. I've said this a million times before but there really aren't enough hours in the day. Most of them are filled with work and random house related jobs. I got another 3k words done on Hemlock Hex and started working on Breaking the Sequence again. This was "inspired by" NaNoWriMo, for which I've failed miserably to meet the average daily word count. But hey getting anything done is good right?

I bought a bike! I did have one already but it was broken down, crappy and would have required significant investment to make roadworthy. So I bought a new one through the Evans Cycles Ride2Work scheme. The voucher, that's meant to take two to three weeks to arrive, turned up two days after I placed my order, so this morning I rode in. Damn it was cold... But damn it was fun too!

We're now hurtling towards Christmas. I think I'm pretty much sorted for present buying, but there's still Christmas dinner to plan. Like fools we volunteered to host this year - it being our first Christmas in our own house - and I can feel lists of timings and alarms being planned. I've got three straight weeks booked off over the holiday too. Should be good!

Done

Well, that's it. Over. Done with. With my dissertation handed in, I've completed every requirement of this MA (short of turning up in a cap and gown and having Michael Parkinson give me a certificate).

How does it feel? Kind of empty to start with. Tired. Irritable. I'm sure it'll fade. But I won't be satisfied until I get my marks.

But, now. Not onward. Rather, to rest.

Moving House…

...is not a suggested activity for mid-way through your writing MA.

Regular posts will resume in the future.